On 2001-11-14 08:57, Kevin Parker '59 wrote:

On 2001-11-13 18:51, Stonewall Patton wrote:
There have been reports made by people allegedly on Long Island that they saw a missile launched from a rooftop. Maybe a hoax, maybe not. But one thing for sure, we know that whatever the government says is not necessarily the truth. I figured by now they would have given us a prepared response that it was a "spark in the center fuel tank."

....by which Mr. Patton is presumably alluding to the crash of Flight 900 off Long Island in July 1996, and the myriad "conspiracy theories" surrounding the disaster. Ummm....yeah, right.

It's not that I believe that our government is above committing questionable or evil acts, and covering them up-- we've seen evidence to the contrary with Watergate, the Kennedy assasination, the various Clinton-gates, and those nuclear tests back in the 50s.

But WHY??? -- for what possible purpose??? -- would the U.S. Navy deliberately shoot down a civilian aircraft and kill all those innocent people? Or, if was a terrible accident, like the time the USS Vincennes shot down that Iranian Airbus A300 over the Persian Gulf, why is it that the media (you know, those "liberal" guys?) never produced a parade of credible witnesses that saw it all happen-- as they did in the Gulf? For that matter, why would the Navy conduct anti-aircraft tests off the NYC coastline, right next to the flight path from JFK-- a disaster waiting to happen-- rather than in the middle of the Atlantic? And if that center-fuel tank explosion was a terrorist attack after all, why in God's name would the government have covered THAT up?

None of those "theories" made any sense five years ago....nor will they now in the wake of the latest airline crash in Queens. If the Feds conclude that this weekend's disaster was not terrorism, but a tragic mechanical mishap, I'm inclined to believe them, for in the wake of 9/11 they certainly would have no reason at all to cover it up.

If the Government is hiding anything, its probably for a procedural Silent-led caution. Silents don't like to make claims until they have the facts. Like the anthrax Florida case, where officials did not want to connect it to the terrorists until it was clear that it wasn't a "naturally occuring case". Likewise, if terrorists were involved with the recent plane crash, officials might not reveal it until they feel the evidence is fairly conclusive and other options ruled out.

By the way, I personally believe the plane crash was mechanical, because of where the plane was going, the type of passengers, and the fact that it crashed during take-off. Quite a difference between a plane full of immigrants and visitors from a Caribbean country falling apart during take-off and a mostly-empty plane crashing into the WTC or the Pentagon.

On 2001-11-14 08:33, Marc S. Lamb wrote:
The Washington Post views victory in light of armchair generals and pundits.


Yet "already we see some members of Congress and some in the administration sliding back toward business as usual, playing politics with airport security, larding spending bills with egregious waste, protecting pet law-enforcement projects that have nothing to do with the fight against terror."

Comment from the peanut gallery:

Since when is a 'representative democracy' supposed to stop arguing over this and that?

When we are no longer a 'representative democracy', that's when.

I think they call it 'beltway' disease, and it affects those parts of the brain one uses in order to think.

Marc, if it is all over, then Junior can sign another executive decree doing away with that repulsive Gestapo and its attendant star chambers he just created and be so kind as to restore the Constitution as the ruling document of the land.

What could be more 4T than this:

At Least for the Moment, a Cooling Off in the Culture Wars

" ... the gathering in Beverly Hills on Sunday involving Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush, and representatives of all of the top Hollywood studios and television networks to discuss what the entertainment industry can do for the war effort... "

Are we confusing 4T with the "High" symbolized by the 1950's? So many posters see any sign of dissent as 3T. Remember that the Unraveling is marked by the final obsolescence of the culture?s institutions. New institutions do not crop up over night. The Depression featured labor strife, lynching, and the Bonus Army ? hardly a time of perfect unity. It was only after the Depression and WWII that the new institutions kicked into high gear and questioning authority was frowned upon.

Scott '63:

(total aside to topic at hand): There's question for your cohort in the Generations folder.

On 2001-11-14 08:33, Marc S. Lamb wrote:



Yet "already we see some members of Congress and some in the administration sliding back toward business as usual, playing politics with airport security, larding spending bills with egregious waste, protecting pet law-enforcement projects that have nothing to do with the fight against terror."

Comment from the peanut gallery:

Since when is a 'representative democracy' supposed to stop arguing over this and that?

When we are no longer a 'representative democracy', that's when.

I think they call it 'beltway' disease, and it affects those parts of the brain one uses in order to think.

The PBS Newshour of 13 November 2001 had a panel of commentators...the Washington, New York and LA members were a twitter about the lack of an effective response; Mr. James Fisher (who put my cattle on the Newshour {which may cloud my view}) of Kansas City was more calm about "airline" safety and the PORK...saying that Fly-over country was not expecting much from Congress in this matter and people were getting on with their several lives and PORK is the product of our solons.

The American State of Mind is at a divide... is it Red/Blue or 3T/4T?

We're 4T now, folks!






<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc S. Lamb on 2001-11-14 15:46 ]</font>

Marc, please explain why Britney #1, Jacko #3, is 4T? or was it the review later in the article about the nearly invisible thongs on the supermodels? :smile:

"Two months after Sept. 11, one of the most catacylsmic events in our nation's history, we'er dithering. There doesn't seem to be any genuine good-faith interest in negotiating on a bi-partisan basis."

Sen. Olympia Snowe R-Maine

Still 3T

Plain Dealer November 14, 2001 Page B1
G. I. Joe once again everyone's hero
by Sam Fulwood III

Seizing Dictatorial Power


Silent 'civil liberties' v. Boomer 'kangaroos'.

On 2001-11-14 20:06, cbailey wrote:
"Two months after Sept. 11, one of the most catacylsmic events in our nation's history, we'er dithering. There doesn't seem to be any genuine good-faith interest in negotiating on a bi-partisan basis."

Sen. Olympia Snowe R-Maine

Still 3T

Nope. In early 4T, before the regeneracy, lots of bickering goes on, because no one has a clue on how to handle the new challenges. But we all now know that we've got problems that we need to fix.

This isn't a Disney cartoon, where a thunderstorm marks the Crisis. Life is messier than that.

You may be right, Jenny.

Can it be that 9/11 and the Afghan War, far from being some landmark event in history, will turn out to be just another 3T brushfire war? The evidence suggests such--this war is pretty much over already. Far from being WWIII, this wasn't even the Gulf War.

On 2001-11-15 17:06, Dominic Flandry wrote:
Can it be that 9/11 and the Afghan War, far from being some landmark event in history, will turn out to be just another 3T brushfire war? The evidence suggests such--this war is pretty much over already. Far from being WWIII, this wasn't even the Gulf War.

True. But just because this is a war happening in 4T, it doesn't imply that it is THE war, or the great discontinuity. If this war throws us into civil upheaval, then we are in 4T. The way it looks, many Americans are gearing up for civil upheavals.

This isn't WWIII. This isn't the Gulf War. It's King Philip's War.

King Philip's War was one of the many historical events and people that I didn't learn about in school, just through reading Generations. That war, between colonists and Indians back in 1676, was the deadliest per capita ever fought by Americans. (King Philip was what the colonists called Chief Metacomet, probably because he reminded them of England's last 4T enemy.) It was what brought the colonies from the Unraveling of pirates, witches, and stockade punishment, into the Glorious Revolution Crisis, where the colonies fought off English tyranny and established themselves as their own society. That society we know today as the Williamsburg era, or the Enlightenment.

It would take a post-Glorious Prophet generation (Ben Franklin, Roger Sherman) to conceive inwardly of colonies politically free of England, a concept they taught their Hero children (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison) to carve into law. Maybe the post-Terror-Crisis generation, having never known life before 911, will conceive of a truly universal order, one where democracy will not simply be for some nations, as our government seems to like it. Then, the New Millennials will lock it into place.

Mr. Blonde

On 2001-11-15 17:43, madscientist wrote:

On 2001-11-15 17:06, Dominic Flandry wrote:
Can it be that 9/11 and the Afghan War, far from being some landmark event in history, will turn out to be just another 3T brushfire war? The evidence suggests such--this war is pretty much over already. Far from being WWIII, this wasn't even the Gulf War.

True. But just because this is a war happening in 4T, it doesn't imply that it is THE war, or the great discontinuity. If this war throws us into civil upheaval, then we are in 4T. The way it looks, many Americans are gearing up for civil upheavals.

Two weeks ago, I was 99% sure the 4T had started, now I'm running about 70% or so. The sudden success of the attack against the Taliban may tell the tale.

If the Taliban fall, will the American people choose:

1) OK, now on to the next agenda item (Iraq? Iran? Sudan? ???)

or will they go with:

2) OK, we've paid back the terrorists and taught the enemy a lesson. Back to normalcy.
What's up with Condit?

If we are foretunate there will be no T4 WWIII. The War on Terrorism-at least as a threat from without-may turn out to be a minor part of the Crisis. Keep in mind that the Glorious Revolution in America included rebellion as well as raids by the Indians. And a domestic upheaval may be what is decisive about the Crisis era.

On 2001-11-15 20:45, HopefulCynic68 wrote:
...
Two weeks ago, I was 99% sure the 4T had started, now I'm running about 70% or so. The sudden success of the attack against the Taliban may tell the tale.

If the Taliban fall, will the American people choose:

1) OK, now on to the next agenda item (Iraq? Iran? Sudan? ???)

or will they go with:

2) OK, we've paid back the terrorists and taught the enemy a lesson. Back to normalcy.
What's up with Condit?

The success of the attack against the Taliban doesn't at all imply whether or not we are in 4T. Being in 4T doesn't mean that wars are all going to be 6 years in length.

What determines whether or not this is 4T depends largely on how we react. If the war is expanded to other nations, and the nation doesn't really react, then this could imply that we are in 3T. At the beginning of every 4T, the citizens want to go back to normalcy. Solstice turnings always start with an event that most think is just a small fad. In the prior Awakening, most people thought that order would be restored, and the nation would continue down the 1T path. By 1967, however, Americans finally realized that they entered a permanent mood shift, and have entered a historic moment. With King Philip's War in 1675, the colonists hoped for a return to normalcy, and expected it. Then Nanthaniel Bacon began his rebellion. The colonists expected a return to normalcy after this event. Then England tried to exercise total authority on the colonies, voiding their rights. Still, they hoped and thought that the issue would soon be resolved. It was only about 1678 that the colonists realized that a return to normalcy would be impossible. The regeneracy started the following year. In the American Revolution 4T, it wasn't until 1776 that the colonists accepted that there would be no return to normalcy, and that they would have to separate. In the Civil War 4T, the public expected and hoped for normalcy, until the first few battles of the Civil War taught them that it was going to be a long and bloody fight. In the previous 4T, the public wanted a return to normalcy. Most people thought that prosperity would quickly return after the stock market crash. Only in 1931 did the public finally realize that there would be no return to normalcy, with the closing of many banks, and unemployment rising. In 1932, the res publica really did seem on the verge is disintegrating. The regeneracy started that year with the election of FDR.

Reactions really do count, but don't expect for society to all of a sudden be yelling for a revolution until we are on the verge of regeneracy. In 3T, problems get shelved. The public expects for the problems to just be put out of their face. In a 4T, these same problems will cause panic and fear. They will produce anxiety. Usually, these problems are shelved. However, with the new mood, the problems will reflect a tear in the social fabric. This new fear affects the economy, and makes people more protective. More problems will mount, having an even larger reaction, and more fear. Soon enough, society realizes that there will be no return to normalcy any time soon, and decide that these problems need to be fixed.

I do not think that people will care for Gary Condit anymore. To most people, the time for that has just passed. People will want a return to normalcy, but they will not want to go back to the 1990s. Because of this mood, problems will begin to mount, and make itself shown. The Silent in office, however, could delay this action, and might prompt voters to toss many of them out of office this November. Action, however, will not come until 2004, which should be the year the regeneracy begins.

Everyone alive today knows that we are at a historic moment. Even so, very few people can even grasp what the ultimate result will be.

Nine weeks and more after 9-11 and every day there is a terrorism related front page headline. Is somebody old enough, or with enough historical background, to know if this is how the Crash was viewed in December 1929? Maybe this would give us a feel for how we compare with this point in the last 4T (assuming 9-11 was the catalyst).

Oh dear.
Condit WAS in the paper today:

Condit Confirms Grand Jury Subpoenaed
Documents in Missing Intern Investigation
LA Times

On a lighter note, a passing of the 3T that I'm sure we'll all applaud.

Springer's Ratings Spring a Leak

Jerry Springer's talk show ratings have plunged 60 percent, but he doesn't plan to change a thing.

After Sept. 11 he considered changes but quickly decided that was a bad idea, Broadcasting & Cable reports.

"We are so much a circus that it doesn't relate to anything else going on in the world, and to even treat anything differently would almost be disrespectful," he said. "If all of a sudden I had a serious show, everyone would be scratching their heads saying when are the transvestites going to come over and admit that bin Laden has panties under his whatever."

Leading Democrats in his home state of Ohio couldn't persuade him to run for the Senate three years ago, but politics could be in his future. "If I were going to do something in politics again, it would probably be in Ohio again," he threatened.

On 2001-11-15 08:17, Jenny Genser wrote:

On 2001-11-14 20:06, cbailey wrote:
"Two months after Sept. 11, one of the most catacylsmic events in our nation's history, we'er dithering. There doesn't seem to be any genuine good-faith interest in negotiating on a bi-partisan basis."

Sen. Olympia Snowe R-Maine

Still 3T

Nope. In early 4T, before the regeneracy, lots of bickering goes on, because no one has a clue on how to handle the new challenges. But we all now know that we've got problems that we need to fix.

This isn't a Disney cartoon, where a thunderstorm marks the Crisis. Life is messier than that.

I completely agree.

Howard Stern low-rated TV show was just cancelled. Stern was a has been anyway, even before September 11. Definitely sounds 4T. NSync has crashed (finally, the Mills will hear some REAL music).

The oddest signs of 3T still about. The other day I went to the bagel shop and noticed a young woman, couldn't have been older than twenty, pregnant and wearing a Ricki Lake t-shirt. Guess we still have THOSE. New Yorkers still shove each other on the subway and rush like hell to grab the train but now with please and thank you. Some progress. Giuliani, "America's mayor", has gone back to nitpicking fights. His latest target are the FDNY officers who were retrieving the remains of their colleagues from the rubble. A fistfight ensued with the NYPD. This reminds me of the subway series last year. Still here the youths usin the *jigga* lingo and other thuggissh thingsnot mentionable on this website. Now people are nice. Instead of telling the youth to pipe down, we count our blessings and realize they will grow up to be the greatest generation ever. If only we could just fix those stylistically dysfunctional schools in Bedford-Stuvesant or Harlem or South-Central or South Side, or what have you. A kid got shot the other day by gangs in front of the high school in my neighborhood. It's nice to know terrorism is over and we can now go back to worrying about drugs and things like that. And Americans are more overweight than ever sitting in front of their TV's and watching Seinfeld instead of 24 hr news. Smell that dirty air in Manhattan and think "aw, hell, will they clear it up already." Bureaucrats in the token booths always their dour selves for our enjoyment. This time I gave one of them a smile when I bought my Metrocard. I think I saw a grin and gold tooth.
'Nough ranting for a while.

My personal belief is that one way to measure our entrance to 4T is the desire for quality architecture in New York. Bloomberg's election as mayor may help move architecture here towards something experimental and quality instead of the same-old Art DSeco rehashes seen during the 80's. True GC stuff, that Bloomberg (and he's supposed to be a Silent born in 1942. Wow.)

Can New York Take Risks in Architecture?

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG'S
mayoral victory showed that the city
is willing to take risks. No one is in love with
the idea that a billionaire bought the election.
But perhaps it took a billionaire to buy City
Hall out of the status quo. That
independence, however come by, might
work to the advantage of New York
architecture.

Since Mr. Bloomberg financed his own
campaign, he didn't have to take donations
from real estate developers. He shouldn't
have to ease the way for them to put up
junk. Nor should he have to go along with
the junk pretensions of the developers'
architects and their professional apologists.
Public taste has been cultivated to expect
more from architecture than mere
"appropriateness." Mediocrity is not the
people's choice. It's not elitist to make
discriminations. The designer of genuine
vision and integrity cannot be dismissed or
marginalized as "avant-garde," "weird,"
"fashionable," "big ego," "difficult" or
"architect of the day."

If the mayor-elect buys into this rancid way
of thinking, it will be because he wants to,
not because he must. Let's hope he doesn't
want to. Now, more than ever, the city
wants change. Mr. Bloomberg has an
opportunity to achieve it by building on the
city's progressive tradition. Architecture is
an integral part of that.

It's also promising, at least on a symbolic
level, that Mr. Bloomberg is from the
information industry. He's in the
consciousness business, and consciousness
is the business of all great cities. No building
should be taller than the distance a voice can
carry from the street, the Greeks said, which
came to mind on Sept. 11 as I looked out
the window of my apartment on the 44th
floor of a high-rise in Lower Manhattan. In
New York, however, public consciousness
has not kept pace with the city's economic
position in the world or with the
technological and intellectual resources at its
disposal. Our retrograde architecture is a
glaring sign of that discrepancy.

New York architecture lost touch with
reality in the mid 70's, when the fiscal crisis
cast the city's future in doubt. In response to
the mood of uncertainty, some architects
and planners sought reassurance in theme
park re-creations of more robust times. By
the early 80's, the city witnessed the invasion
of the paperweights: unconvincing remakes
of Art Deco skyscrapers, designed to evoke
the late 20's, as if the Depression itself could
be bypassed this time around. It was a
wrong turn. At a time when the infrastructure
of the "informational city" was being laid
down around the world, New York mistook
the image of its future in a rear-view mirror.

These were lost years for the city, because they were transformative years
for the world. Especially in the 12 years since the Berlin wall came down,
New York has largely ignored the opportunity to reappraise its place in a
rapidly evolving global structure. Even now, two months after the World
Trade Center attack, decision makers are looking toward shopworn,
parochial concepts to address challenges of planetary, millennial scope. Does
anyone seriously think that the cultural, intellectual and philosophical issues
raised by the attack lie within the competence of private developers and
corporate architecture firms? Yet that insult to the intelligence may very well
lie in store for New York.

"It is with a great sense of loss that we confront the opportunities ahead,"
proclaimed the draft of a statement prepared by the NYCRebuild
Infrastructure Task Force, an ad hoc group initially formed by the New York
City Partnership/Chamber of Commerce, the Real Estate Board of New
York and the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It
would take Jules Feiffer or a mime of genius to visually represent this
sentence. I imagine a chorus of professional mourners, cloaked from head to
toe as if for a performance by Martha Graham dancers, alternately wailing
their grief and rubbing their hands in greedy expectation. Aiee! Aiee! Aiee!
Rub rub rub rub rub.

True, the document, though widely circulated, was only a draft. It never
appeared on the group's Web site. Also true, the task force has morphed
into a less blatant form of ambulance chasing than it at first appeared. Still,
someone wrote that sentence. Someone considered it an "appropriate"
thought to put down on paper. Someone couldn't even get to the end of the
sentence before grabbing onto the ambulance bumper. So long as the
redevelopment of Lower Manhattan is driven mainly by market values, we
should not expect the level of thinking to rise much higher.

In recent years, there has been some improvement in New York's
architectural picture. New additions like the Rose Center for Earth and
Space, the Austrian Cultural Institute and the LVMH Tower, and those
under way like the American Museum of Folk Art, the Museum of Modern
Art's ventures in midtown Manhattan and Queens, and the planned New
York Times headquarters have refrained from scenographic reproductions of
the past. With the exception of Raimund Abraham's design of the Austrian
Cultural Institute, none of these projects take notable risks. But they have
stirred memories of the city's progressive tradition and gained for it a public
support that had languished.

Even more venturesome designs have appeared this year by Rem Koolhaas,
Toyo Ito, Frank Gehry, Diller and Scofidio, Norman Foster, Peter
Eisenman, Richard Meier and Jean Nouvel. Unfortunately, few will be built.
But it will take more than a handful of buildings by famous architects to bring
New York up to speed. Historical awareness, global consciousness, less
tolerance for mediocrity, more tolerance for difference: these are some of the
qualities that will have to be drawn upon. In New York they exist in greater
abundance than anywhere on earth. But they have been denied a significant
place in public service.

One quality stands out above the others: the willingness to take risks.
Nobody does risk better than New York. It is the central feature of both
modern culture and the capitalist system, which is symbolically based in
Lower Manhattan. In the mayor's race two weeks ago, we learned how big
a factor risk is in politics, too. And wouldn't it be a good thing if architecture
were encouraged to reinforce this connection between power and
imagination? Where is our urban mythology of risk?
ust a year ago, a news conference was held
to announce Rudolph W. Giuliani's selection
of the Guggenheim Museum's proposal to
develop a city property on the East River at
the foot of Wall Street. It was an oddly
moving event. The mayor's public and
private lives were then in such turmoil that it
was scarcely possible to distinguish between
them. Diagrams of his prostate gland
appeared in the news. He was in
headline-making divorce proceedings with
his wife, Donna Hanover, who was
appearing in "The Vagina Monologues." As
if this were a horror movie version of his life,
the mayor's fiercely armored persona had
turned inside out.

At the news conference, the mayor stood at
the podium beside Frank Gehry, architect of
the Guggenheim's proposed museum in
Lower Manhattan. The two were backed by
a half-circle of museum and city officials.
Jean Nathan, Mr. Giuliani's companion,
stood off to one side. Mr. Gehry talked
about the personal meaning of the project;
about how, when he was growing up in
Toronto, his father would tell him stories
about New York, where he'd lived before
emigrating to Canada. Later, he told a
reporter that he hadn't planned to talk about
his father, but when he got to the podium he
spotted his son, Alejandro, standing at the
back of the room. For a second, he saw a
resemblance between his father and his son
that he had never noticed before. Gehry's
remarks were somewhat fumbling, but his
point was unmistakable. New York is
deeply embedded in the DNA of everyone
who believes that modern democracy can't
exist without great cities.

The mayor's remarks were mostly limited to
the project's economic benefits. Not for the
first time, I noted Mr. Giuliani's apparent
indifference to architecture. But at one point,
he departed from the script to acknowledge
its "cultural and, if I may say, spiritual
values." He stumbled on the first syllable of
the word "spiritual," with the result that it
came out sounding heartfelt, not the political
boilerplate one expects on such occasions.

For that instant, there seemed to be a life
connection between the two figures standing
beside each other at the podium. Here was
an artist who'd risen to international fame by
projecting the inner life into the public
sphere. Next to him was a politician who'd
built a successful career out of being an
emotional stranger to himself. The reporter
wanted to shout out: "Hang onto that
moment, mister! Redemption is calling!"

But the moment came so late in the game.
We already knew by then what the mayor's
architectural legacy was most likely going to
be: bunkers, bollards, barricades and the
restricted access they signified. Lower Manhattan since Sept. 11, in fact, has
been an apotheosis of this legacy, an extreme monument to the rule of
boundaries. And it could well be a portent of anti-terrorist measures to
come.

The architectural expression of risk never stood much chance in Mr.
Giuliani's New York. The goal of normalcy was pursued with far too much
prosecutorial zeal. At the end, Mr. Giuliani has earned our gratitude for
bringing order and confidence at a time of unprecedented crisis. Still, the
damage inflicted on civil discourse has been graver than most people care to
admit.

Mayor to advocates of community parks: Haven't they heard Marxism is
over? You can listen to that sort of thing only so long before you start
building walls inside your head. Until one day you just forget to breathe.

Another moment will stay with me a while. There's a route I sometimes take
to get from home to the Lexington Avenue subway. It passes between the
back of City Hall and the back of the old Tweed Courthouse, whose
restoration is almost complete. In recent years, the gates to this pathway
have often been closed. Hazardous building construction is the reason usually
given, though I've sometimes given into the pathetic fallacy of seeing the gates
as clues to the mayor's state of mind.

One afternoon last year, a week or so after the mayor pulled out of the
senate race, the gates were open, and as I walked past City Hall I suddenly
realized that I was breathing. I felt as free as the birds in City Hall Park. I
thought, truly, I am not afraid to think.

It was a startling sensation, yet a familiar one. This was the New York
atmosphere I used to know. The air in which it's possible to be yourself.